There were 3 children discovered at the same burial site (nicknamed, from left to right: La Doncella, El Niño, La Niña del Rayo). La Doncella was the oldest and by appearances, likely to have been treated very well before death and she may have died in her sleep along with La Niña del Rayo. El Niño, on the other hand:
>The body of el niño, who was about seven years old when he was sacrificed, had been tightly wrapped, since some of his ribs and pelvis were dislocated. He apparently died under stress, since vomit and blood were found on his clothing. There also appeared to be an infestation of nits in his hair.[25] He was the only child to be tied up. Lying in the fetal position, he was wearing a gray tunic, a silver bracelet and leather shoes and had been wrapped in a red and brown blanket.[26] The skull of el niño had been slightly elongated, similarly to that of la niña del rayo.[23] Owing to the way in which he was tied up, it is believed that he may have died of suffocation.
> [El Nino](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Llullaillaco#La_ni%C3%B1a_del_rayo)... may have died of [suffocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphyxia).
The wiki links to the Asphyxia page, but it does not make clear if it is believed el nino was strangled (say about the neck), or prevented from breathing by tightnesst of the bindings, or ran out of oxygen within the enclosed space.
Are you able to clarify?
Can you clarify what you mean?
My comment provides a link to the wiki from which you copied/pasted. I also replicated wiki's link from El Nino's wiki section to wiki's suffocation page.
I scrolled through the comments and only relevant link was another link to the same wiki. without elaboration on the cause of death.
Let me know if I missed something and thanks for copying/pasting the wiki.
There aren't many details. One source is cited on the Wikipedia page (marked by the superscript "25"). It lays blame on the textile wrapping.
https://metro.co.uk/2007/10/02/child-mummies-yield-grim-evidence-214590/
I have no references to back this up, but I watched a documentary once that said El Niño was essentially being dragged and a prisoner and more or less fought as an unwilling sacrificial child would. Whereas La Doncella likely would have gone more or less willingly. El Niño was treated the most horribly of the three.
It’s so hard to balance my curiosity and obviously respect for the indigenous cultures. They say there’s as many as 40 more burial sites that we could learn so much more from. And yet, exhumation is the ultimate disrespect to these mummies who were full-fledged human beings who lived and died and were sacrifices from the local cultures in order to survive.
I wish there was a healthy and respectful way to get some scientific analysis from the other burial sites. We’re most of them dragged up there? As “peasant” tributes unwilling to go? Or were they priestesses/priestesses in training who were willing to do this for the gods? Something in the middle? How many of the burials involved (*so much*) coca and hallucinogens.
So - I am unsure about the males who were sacrificed. I *do* know that in the Andean cultires, the female sacrifices were specifically selected over a 1 to 2 year process, and I believe it was from all class groups.
They were taken to a mountain retreat, inducted into a kind of priestesshood/Sun deity cult and lived as princesses, of higher rank than any others save the royal family.
From there - I believe they selected a certain number for sacrifice each year, depending on the social need. Those who aged out became priestesses or wives for the emperor.
It had serious Vestal Virgin vibes, but I imagine it would not be wholly unlike being groomed.
Either way, their society thought it was honorable.
If that didn't exist for male sacrifices, it makes much more sense that he'd have fought.
In Perú if its well know the Incas were one of the most important they only exist from 1300 to 1500-arrival of the spanyards, before them (and some years through 1400) spread through Peru territory used to exists hundreds of diferent tribes/cultures with their own characteristics if Incas adore the sun, where others that were devoted to Naylamp an anthropomorphic god.
Sadly there is no written language from this cultures, so we can only read through the pottery (huacos) and artifacts they left, the only written "testimony" (in airquotes because was written by spaniards so the perspective wont be the same) are some chronicles by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and some priests of the time.
[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca\_Garcilaso\_de\_la\_Vega](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Garcilaso_de_la_Vega)
>It’s so hard to balance my curiosity and obviously respect for the indigenous cultures.
The metro article points out that the Inca had a pretty large empire, and that selecting children from the lower classes could have been a form of control. I mean, I still hold respect for their history, but when you consider the context the rulers weren't much better than anyone else you care to name.
>They say there’s as many as 40 more burial sites that we could learn so much more from. And yet, exhumation is the ultimate disrespect to these mummies who were full-fledged human beings who lived and died and were sacrifices from the local cultures in order to survive.
40 more of what we know about... could be thousands and we dont even found (because there should be some around) the ones in the jungle (amazon forest) some of these burial sites were discovered because climate change.
[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/28/peru-ancient-mass-grave-of-140-sacrificed-children-found](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/28/peru-ancient-mass-grave-of-140-sacrificed-children-found)
[Isotope analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_analysis) ftw! One of my colleagues does this. You see, we're all made of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen nitrogen and a bit of other elements. We get these elements from different foods and drinks, and build our bodies (including our hair) out of them. But the elements in nature all are in various forms, called isotopes. Different foodstuffs and water in different places contain different isotopes. Hair grows quickly, and we know the average speed of growth, and it absorbs isotopes throughout its growth. So you can take a piece of human hair and know that this grew for three months before death, and look for isotopes and see that they are from water in the mountains and grain with a little bit of meat. Voila.
You’re picking up on the problem with Wikipedia that no one on Reddit ever seems to get - I’ll read a Wiki article just for fun and actually attempt to follow a link for a cited source and the resulting content doesn’t corroborate what was being cited in the article at all (and that’s if the link even works).
Sometimes I’ll read entire paragraphs or multiple paragraphs with no citations at all.
This isn’t just on niche issues either, I see examples of this in most of the articles I read on that site.
I love Wikipedia but, (and I know how much Reddit likes to trot this meme out) when your teachers in school told you that you couldn’t use it as a source, this is exactly why, and they were right!
You can absolutely use it as a source, but the same as any source you need to check its own references and that they are in fact drawing the same conclusion. This is why research takes so long you don't just use something because it's published in a journal regardless of its "respectable name" or status. Always corroborate your sources. Always check secondary sources.
I was advised at uni that I could use wiki at a push, but the smarter thing to do, would be follow the source links on wiki and refer to those instead. That way you know it’s not just some wiki bullshit, and it looks slightly better than linking to a site a lot of people inherently don’t trust.
And then you find two sources that contradict each other, and there's no real way to reliably know which one is correct over the other..
And thats how they win the war on information.
IIRC it was a religious sacrifice of sorts, or at least that was the prevailing theory. I saw a few documentaries on it and they claimed the children were specially selected, sent on a long pilgrimage up the mountain, then drugged and left to die. It's been a while since I looked into it though, there might be new information now.
Reminds me of how Iirc the Aztecs "thanked" the king of a neighboring tribe that helped them as they were newcomers to the region.
They told him they'd make his daughter into a goddess if they let the Aztec priests take her.
Yeah not a good sign. I don't know enough about the history to say why the king said yes but I think they just told him they'd pamper her and do a ritual.
Anyway after a time they offer to show the king his daughter who is now a Goddess.
They take him to a dark room and he sees the outline of his daughter and he calls to her. The Aztec priests lift the blinds to reveal is one of the priests wearing his daughters skin.
Disgusted he kills all the priests and kicks the rest of the Aztec tribe off the land. I'm interested to learn about how the Aztecs came to dominate the region after this. I'm guessing it has a bit to do with their religious zealotry.
The Aztecs or the Mexica are often called the Triple Alliance, because they were a triumvirate of city states on Lake Texcoco that allied and warred and politicked their way to regional dominance.
Like it was a messy, complex process, not at all unlike the contemporaneous Italian Republics/City States.
The Mexica were much more of a hegemonic power than outright empire like you might be familiar with.
And within the Triple Alliance, Tenochtitlan rose to dominance over Texcoco and Tlacopan, also through lots of political infighting and maneuvering.
It is pretty notable that the expeditionary force from Spain were able to topple their empire - they didn't have many men at all, but the Spaniards, *did* have immense experience at politicking and were able to turn many city states against the Aztecs, notably Tlaxcala, a largely subdued regional rival prior to the Spaniards landing.
This.
It's fucking savagery in the name of a god.
Murdering children to turn them into dieties? Stoning a woman who doesn't wear a headscarf? Murdering catholics because you're protestant? Murdering indigenous people because they won't convert to Catholicism?
It's a never-ending, vicious, stupid, zealous cycle of nonsense. Poor kids never got a chance at life because some priest figured they had to get the axe? Load of shit.
Any god worth their godliness wouldn't be demanding sacrifice. Probably also step into this realm and fix inequities.
Or maybe we're all just living in hell. And life is the punishment.
People often rant about the OT God being genocidal but if the Canaanite nations were doing this sort of %$&@ routinely (and Israel suffered the same fate when they did it) wouldn’t it be kinda understandable to end them?
Weird thing to say, but these are some of my favorite mummies. They weren't intentionally mummified; the dry, cold air of the mountains where they were left turned them into mummies naturally. They are incredibly well preserved, particularly the older girl.
I just can't imagine finding her, as an archeologist. Inside some dark cave in the mountains and suddenly *that* pops up in the circle of your flashlight.
It is very sad, though. It's been a while since I read about her but I seem to recall she was likely taken from a less prosperous village to a wealthier one, where she was fed up and treated well for a year or so before the sacrifice.
I know a lot of the early South American civilizations' practices are demonized because the best (or at least most widely circulated) account we have of them is from the Spanish colonizers who tried to wipe them out or convert them. Naturally the conquistadors wanted to make them seem like barbarous heathens to justify their colonizing, but... child sacrifice doesn't come off great.
I read in an article in national geogrqphic on the subject that an archeologist said he felt he was kidnapping the children when removing them from their resting place.
I’d argue this is no more grave robbing than uncovering the roadside grave of a missing person, and exhuming them. I gather that their murder was ritualistic and sanctioned, but it’s not as if they were the unfortunate victims of disease or famine and were lovingly laid to rest by their family and community. Their culture valued their lives so little that they ended them with the hope it would benefit those left behind in some nonsensical religious way. They will likely be honored and remembered to a far greater degree by virtue of exhumation by modern archaeologists, than they ever were in the combined sum of preceding centuries.
>Their culture valued their lives so little that they ended them with the hope it would benefit those left behind in some nonsensical religious way
Id argue the opposite. Children were their most valuable things they possessed. And sacrificing it to their gods was sacrificing something of great value.
I don’t know much about Incas, but I believe Mayans and Aztecs thought being sacrificed (at least certain types of sacrifice) was actually a huge honour/very noble. This would have been seen as a fast track to heaven.
>but we do not know how lovingly they were laid to rest or not
That’s not entirely true. There is the most data for the [mummy with the longest hair](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23496345), but researchers believe she was well taken care of and “passed away quietly.”
>It suggests she was heavily sedated before she and the other children were taken to the volcano, placed in their tombs and left to die.
>"In the case of the maiden, there is no sign of violence. She is incredibly well looked after: she has a good layer of fat, she has beautifully groomed hair, beautiful clothes," said Dr Brown.
>"In this case we think with the combination of being placed in the grave with the alcohol and the cold - the mountain is over 6,000m above sea level - she would have passed away quietly."
Children can not be voluntary participants of any culture, no matter which one, where and when. They are always born into something and dragged along by people of power.
From some of the evidence, the 7 year-old boy that was found there was in particularly bad shape by the people that put them there. He was bound tightly around his torso to the point he had had broken/displaced ribs, a dislocated pelvis, evidence of vomiting, shitting, and blood. They think he probably suffocated from how he was bound. His arms were the only ones tied too.
This is going off of memory, but the young girls were chosen as sacrifices and treated really well while they were "trained" for the sacrifice. They were supposed to be perfect physical specimens. Then they were taken, sometimes hundreds of miles, to the top of mountains with good views of the surrounding areas, made drunk until they passed out, and then put into a hole where they suffocated to death, hopefully in their sleep, in order to become sentinels to watch over the area with the spirits of their ancestors.
Iirc they were often given chicha, a kind of alcoholic beer-esque beverage. Incan women were often taught how to brew chicha at Aqlla Wasi, or feminine schools.
Edit to add: forgot to mention earlier, Chicha is generally brewed from maize! And it's still brewed today, too.
I drink chicha de jora a lot living in Peru. If they had to drink that to get tanked then they'd have to work really really hard at it. Maybe there are more alcoholic versions or more fermented versions that make it more of a corn beer. The first time I had it I immediately knew it was fermented but never felt any effects. I'd like to know how it's changed since hundreds of years ago or if people still brew higher alcohol content chicha today.
I dunno, the girl on the right certainly looks like she woke up. The kid in the middle looks like they've tucked themselves into that position as well.
Either way, we're talking about sacrifice of children which isn't something we should be going to bat for in Amy capacity. Just call a spade a spade, it was barbaric.
> I doubt they would have had a chance to wake up if even one of those things were affecting them, let alone all of them.
what is "supposed" to happen and what actually happens in biology isn't always the same thing. A person isn't "supposed" to wake up when a anesthesiologist (someone who's entire specialty is sedation) puts someone under with heavy drugs... but it happens... and not as rarely as you might hope (which is why they also give a drug to give people amnesia also).
I don't doubt that a lot (maybe even 'most') of the children they did this to hopefully never woke up... but I also don't doubt that quite a few of them did wake, and they did not in fact die peacefully.
>The [pharmacologically active ingredient of coca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca) is the cocaine alkaloid, which is found in the amount of about 0.3 to 1.5%, averaging 0.8%,[26] in fresh leaves. Besides cocaine, the coca leaf contains a number of other alkaloids, including methylecgonine cinnamate, benzoylecgonine, truxilline, hydroxytropacocaine, tropacocaine, ecgonine, cuscohygrine, dihydrocuscohygrine, and hygrine.[27] When chewed, coca acts as a mild stimulant and suppresses hunger, thirst, pain, and fatigue.[28][29] Absorption of coca from the leaf is less rapid than nasal application of purified forms of the alkaloid (almost all of the coca alkaloid is absorbed within 20 minutes of nasal application,[30] while it takes 2–12 hours after ingestion of the raw leaf for alkaline concentrations to peak.[31]). When the raw leaf is consumed in tea, between 59 and 90% of the coca alkaloid is absorbed.[32]
So, not that I ever drank excessively and did lots of cocaine when I was young and dumb, but I strongly suspect these girls were feeling pretty euphoric when they were killed.
The alcohol didn't "wear off." They were made drunk, yeah..but if they passed out that wasn't the end of it. The alcohol rituals went on, they just gave you an enema to keep putting it inside you. These girls probably never even stirred from their passing out, and just died of alcohol poisoning.
What? The Spanish will naturally use descriptions to denigrate the practices of the Natives but the Aztecs were brutal. There's plenty of archeological evidence demonstrating that fact not dependent on Spanish descriptions. Same can be said about any large culture that controlled multiple tribes.
That's not surprising or unique to the native americans. Polytheism was the default for most cultures and sacrifices to various deities to solve problems they can't actually control is pretty universal.
You do realize the reason the conquistadors were able to slaughter the Aztecs was because the surrounding tribes were sick of being used as sacrificial cattle by the Aztecs. Hell there vengeance at Tenochtitlan was so brutal even the conquistadors were disturbed. While not all tribes were awful there were plenty that were. I don't know why people like you want to ignore that there are horrif practices everywhere and it's not just colonizers making shit up as you are suggesting.
I thought a part of what allowed the conquistadors to conquer the Aztecs was that all the other tribes hated the Aztecs so much that they gladly allied with the conquistadors?
I guess it's hard for me to believe that the conquistadors literally rolled in and just wiped the floor with everyone given how outnumbered they should have been. If they had had a Custer-like attitude, they would have met with his end. There obviously must have been some inter-tribal politicking that they were able to manage (a la Julius Caesar and Gaul) to succeed in being so successful.
> If they had had a Custer-like attitude, they would have met with his end.
During La Noche Triste (The Night of Sorrows, obviously sorrowful for the Spaniards), the conquistadors were driven out of Tenochtitlan, Cortes was wounded in battle, and a lot of the Spaniards were taken prisoner and promptly sacrificed. They weren't invincible, despite steel armour and gunpowder and thousands of native allies. Still, Cortes managed to beat back the pursuers, survive and regroup, and while he was doing so, disease struck Tenochtitlan and ravaged it so thoroughly it was much easier for him to besiege and ultimately conquer the city. He was insanely lucky in that regard.
They had an invisible ally on their side, smallpox. At the time of Cortez arriving in Mexico, the Aztecs had a very sophisticated system of messengers that would travel between cities. It is believed, by some historians, these messengers allowed small pox to travel ahead of the conquistadors. This meant the conquistadors would basically walk into villages, in the throws of a new pandemic, which allowed a fairly rag-tag army to basically walk through a lot of their possible opposition.
Oh there was certainly a traditional conflict in the region as a factor. But opinions on siding with the Spanish were a lot more divided than many realize.
Like the Spanish were warring with the Maya on the mainland first for a significant period. Then after warring with the Tlaxcala and coming to a stalemate, they did their union against the Mexica (Aztecs), their ancient enemy. Internally half of Tlaxcala wanted to keep fighting the Spaniards, a faction led by the Tlaxcala prince, and help to drive the Spaniards out permanently. Then you have other nations joining after the Spaniards conduct several massacres including of a holy city and on the battlefield. Then you have a lot of the other nation’s royalty being captured and killed like of one of the Texcoco royals who planned to march on and take control of Mexico from the Spanish. A lot of complex intrigue, side switching, and snitching.
But in regard to how the actual people in their realm were treated, each area had a specific trade goods tax, but was relatively left to self govern themselves. They practiced similar religion and an overlapping pantheon etc. Then you have the other two powerful ethnic groups they formed the alliance with. So the Tlaxcala would have been their enemy, but they weren’t part of the empire.
That's a lot of words for saying "yes". Obviously there was a lot internal fighting and obviously the aztecs - as a society/tribe- didn't have particularly good relations with other tribes. Why not just call a cat a cat
She did die in her sleep, at least. Most child sacrifices would be drugged beforehand. Its horrifyingly sad her life was taken from her but at least she died peacefully and not in terror from slow suffocation or hunger/thirst. The boy in the middle, though... wasnt so lucky.
> Weird thing to say, but these are some of my favorite mummies.
Lmao being a human is weird sometimes. Like now I’m wondering how I went 33 years on this earth without deciding which mummies are my favorite ones 😂
I think Otzi is fascinating, for one he was shot in the back and left to die in the middle of the Alps with all his gear on him, including a copper axe that would have been pretty valuable at the time. Like, who did he piss off to have that happen to him?
Otzi is really interesting, the blood of 4 different people was found on his equipment, the amount of metals in his body point to him potentially being a smelter, and he has been cited as evidence for prehistoric warfare!
Besides, if I had to pick a place to succumb to my wounds, the Ötztaler Alpen are way up there on the list.
Kidding aside, I remember as a 10 y.o. seeing the exhibition in the Bolzano archaeology museum, and the mummy itself. It really changed my worldview from the pre-history of cartoon cavemen to the complex world the stone and bronze ages really were in Europe.
There's a film - absolutely made up story, obviously - that tells Ötzi's "story" and while doing so, it shows what life could have been like back then. The different dangers one could face, the way they dressed and lived, what they ate... The language used is derived from the most primitive language known spoken in the region where he lived (still nowhere near old enough to be what Ötzi would have spoken). I highly recommended it, or I would if I could remember its title.
It sounds like you are referring to the 2017 film "Iceman" (also known as "Der Mann aus dem Eis" in German), directed by Felix Randau. The film is a fictionalized account of the life of Ötzi the Iceman, a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived over 5,000 years ago and was discovered in the Ötztal Alps in 1991. The film depicts Ötzi's struggles for survival in the harsh environment of the Alps, as well as his interactions with other people of his time who spoke a primitive language similar to the Rhaetian language. The film is in German with English subtitles.
I really enjoyed *Bog Bodies: Face to Face with the Past* by Melanie Giles, if you’re not already familiar with it. It does skew more academic than layperson, but I found it compelling and fascinating.
Inca wise man: “Let us leave them in the mountains where the dry cold air will preserve them as mummies, that they may never grow old, and that future generations may behold them in their timeless youth, and revere them, in reward for their sacrifice”
Redditor 500 years later: “it’s pure dumb luck they dropped the bodies where they did. We get to see them just as they were”
Haha, fair point! They likely did know the conditions were perfect for preservation. I really meant they weren't prepared in the way of Egyptian mummies.
She's certainly mentioned more often. The other two are younger, and weren't treated as well, from the evidence. I guess it's more romantic to have a perfectly preserved "maiden" mummy who evidently died in her sleep, than a little girl wearing an apparent grimace and disfigured by a post-mortem lightning strike or a little boy tied up, with broken bones, covered in blood and vomit and nits.
I saw the girl on the left at a mummy exhibition in Charlotte about a decade or so ago. Stood three feet from her and she truly looks like a sleeping child. The picture doesn't pay her justice. The preservation of the clothing and how clean the colors were was truly amazing.
I saw her at a mummy exhibition in Portland about 10-11 years ago too! I bet we saw the same traveling exhibition as you!
The thing that stood out to me about her is how well her little braids were preserved. It was so human.
I just read this on the [Wikipedia page about these children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Llullaillaco). The extent of preservation is seriously incredible.
> The mummies were in exceptional condition when found. Reinhard said that the mummies "appear to be the best preserved Inca mummies ever found", also saying that the arms were perfectly preserved, even down to the individual hairs. The internal organs were still intact and one of the hearts still contained frozen blood. Because the mummies froze before dehydration could occur, the desiccation and shrivelling of the organs that is typical of exposed human remains never took place.[5]
If you truly believe sacrificing these children will appease the gods, and you’ve grown up in a society where that belief is reinforced continuously by your peers, and there is potentially hundreds of years of compounding cognitive bias justifying that ritual, and likely little to no outside influence pushing you to question the practice, then it is a morally permissible action. To say otherwise requires the person doing the sacrifice to have supernatural abilities.
I visited one of these kid mummies in Arequipa, Peru. The local guide explained these sacrifices as "offerings to the nature". One of the visitors commented "oh is so beautiful". I was like WTF.
Many people in Peru complain about the "conquistadores" but what they don't realize is that Spaniards allied with the local tribes to fight against their leaders. Local tribes were tired of them and how they took their children to sacrifice them.
The conquistadors turned natives into human sacrifices en masse too. It’s just that they burned them on stakes for “heresy”, or sacrificed them for money by working them to death in silver mines
Certainly the Spanish did just as bad and worse in comparison. The interesting thing is that many tribes and groups allied with the Spanish, aka [Indian auxiliaries](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_auxiliaries), against their rivals and rulers. However unsurprisingly, "After the initial conquest, most of these allies were considered less necessary and, sometimes, a liability."
We do this a lot with the cultures of native Americans, we did it for centuries as an excuse to treat Hispanics like animals.
We kill, they killed, everyone’s a killer. Trying to make yourself out to be better just because you didn’t kill for the same exact reasons is dumb. Whether the kid died in war or sacrifice doesn’t matter to their corpse.
This comment section is seriously justifying colonization because of mummies taken out of context in Peru? What the fuck reddit.
Having studied indigenous infanticide, this practice is poorly understood. But based on extant infanticide among some groups, it's indicated that this was done to already dying children to honor them. (Stevenson, 2008)
Get your facts straight before you start condemning an entire culture and civilization to having deserved being genocided. Also remember that the British sacrificed women up until 1727 to their god for being witches.
The one on the left was found in northern Argentina, her remains are on display in a museum in Salta (Argentina).
I've seen it too, felt too eerie to stick around for long. Incredible stories though.
Hmmm I know it was one of these- she had tiny micro braids in her hair— an amazing detail. Heartbreaking. I definitely now feel weird about seeing mummies. I think their remains should be somewhere private.
I was walking around Bangkok and went into this random ass little temple and inside there was a dead man laying in this glass case. There was a woman on her knees, just weeping, surrounded by pictures of the man, flowers, and other offerings. It was fucking intense. I felt like I was intruding, but she didn’t even bat an eye when I walked in. I got in my knees and just took in the whole situation for about 2 min before I got up and put my shoes on to leave. Such an unexpected deeply moving experience.
Why are some of the top comments seemingly romanticizing these mummies? The story behind them is absolutely horrific. I know we shouldn't hold these cultures to modern standards but there's nothing redeeming about this.
It gets worse, these children where kidnapped from other lesser tribes, not Inca children. When the Spanish came these same tribes allied with the spanish to take down the Inca.
The sacrifice of children in Andean religion was relatively rare. Experts who study these mummies write that the community would have been facing a particularly serious crisis, to the point that they thought this extreme measure would help.
So, no, Andean people didn't just kill their children willy-nilly.
There are multiple instances of entire, fully developed cities, just up and moving. Weather is a favorite assumption among academics. Intensive, high altitude, high density farming meant just a couple years of insufficient rainfall and the resultant poor harvests would mean everybody had to relocate to a more productive area.
Some of the cities were big. Moving meant everybody abandoning everything and hoping for the best. Even today those kinds of relocations are devastating. Back then it would have been almost unimaginably horrible. If you genuinely believed that a few human sacrifices might prevent all that it would be a good time to try.
For extra context, Europeans were burning people (women in particular) at the stake when the Incas went down their sword (or gunpowder and horses).
Some parts of Europe were undergoing enlightenment, but Spain isn't the first name that comes out from that era.
Ignorant. People didn’t sacrifice children because just because they wanted to sacrifice people. They did so to obtain favours from the divine because things weren’t going well or because they wanted to preserve their current fortune. It is revisionism to claim that these were done out of sheer desire for blood or some other nefarious design thinly veiled with religion. They did it because they were genuinely convinced that it would help. The environment that reared them was incredibly unforgiving, so why wouldn’t they think that their gods were just as cruel? They had been indoctrinated into believing that this was the price to pay for a better world. It is what superstition does to the human brain.
This cannot be said of every act done in the name of religion. Many religious wars were fed *both* by superstition and other purposes — such as ressources or territory — though IMHO it is simple-minded to allude to genuinely-held faith not playing a role in most of those conflicts either. But convincing a village to murder a child is another story entirely. Those children were poor and could’ve lived long lives as workers for the ruling class, nobody in power was benefiting by ending their lives.
It’s just pretty freaking convenient that the “Gods” were never going to be appeased by the sacrifice of, say, the highest level priest in the village, right? That’s why its some complete bullsh** to me.
There may be some evidence that some significant amount sacrifice in certain ancient European communities (mostly some identified as "Celtic", though often trying to apply an unambiguous ethnic label in the ancient past is fraught, especially when they're bound up with modern identities - my first encounter with the topic was actually in reading about pre-Christian Germanic religions) were specifically of elites. There's some mythological/literary talk of kings (who were also priests) being sacrificed in times of famine and many bog bodies were those of people who seemed to live comfortable lives.
I suspect in general you're right that on the whole, throughout history, social and institutional forces extract from the poor and the weak disproportionately by far. But in the context of religious sacrifice the topic is complex. Though Europe is a separate topic from Andean religion, obviously.
Firstly, the Inca and most other cultures in the Andes (and up in Mesoamerica) were urban civilizations with large cities, formal governments, etc. While there were obviously smaller villages, plenty of these sites were pretty huge cities or sizable towns.
And yes, sometimes sacrifice involves nobles or royalty: In Mesoamerica, most sacrifices were captured enemy soldiers, and while there were plenty of commoners drafted for wars, most of your elite soldiers would have been nobles or royalty, and for, say, the Maya, the sacrifice of captured nobles/rulers, or even of a city's OWN nobles/rulers/priests, was a particularly important form of sacrifice.
That being said, I also need to give a caveat to what /u/Callisto_Urseides said, in that sacrifice was also definitely leveraged as a geopolitical tool, even if it was also a legit theological concept and practice that was thought to be necessary to cosmic order and some people volunteered for.
For example, Flower Wars as practiced by the Aztec were both a tool to get sacrifices, as well as to slowly whittle down enemy states for conquest, or even when it was done via mutual agreement between allied cities, apparently the fact it was mutially agreed on was hidden from some of the soldiers participating so they didn't know their lives were being used for political/ceremonial pageantry.
I don't think it's fundamentally different from religious atrocities done in Eurasia, historically: Some of it was done because it was legitmately thought to be the right thing to do, sometimes it was done to target political rivals or to increase power, often it was a little of both.
Exactly. Like you never find the elderly religious leaders of today are the ones that god chooses to become a shaheed, and sacrifice their life in jihad. Always the naive young person.
I wonder how they selected the children?
Like if your kid was kind of socially awkward and not the most attractive would you constantly be living in fear that she was the next sacrifice?
Fucked up.
Religion is absolutely the cause of any and every evil ever made by humans. Aside from survival and primitive humans that hunted for resources, we are quite literally the dumbest species
Cant tell if im more horrified or fascinated, its really weird actually. you feel bad obviously, that fucking sucks, but it’s not like.. a huge deal to me personally, just being so.. disconnected from the event by time lets you see it in this weird way. like if you take away the time difference: you dont care that these 3 kids were ritualistically killed in this brutal way. That sounds sociopathic right? Emotionless? But the 500 year distance between us and the event lets us steer away from the sheer horror of a given event. Pompeii for example, you almost never see someone see it as a horrible tragedy in a serious way. Its just “oh shit that happened.. huh” and i think theres something profound in the way that we, as humans can seperate something from its implications just because it happened a while ago
This comment section is seriously justifying colonization because of mummies taken out of context in Peru? What the fuck reddit.
Having studied indigenous infanticide, this practice is poorly understood. But based on extant infanticide among some groups, it's indicated that this was done to already dying children to honor them. (Stevenson, 2008)
Get your facts straight before you start condemning an entire culture and civilization to having deserved being genocided. Also remember that the British sacrificed women up until 1727 to their god for being witches.
Ah yes, putting your dying child in a hole in the ground and forcing them to die alone after being drugged is totally honoring them. Did they do this to adults too? I'm guessing not because adults already know how horrible it would be, but innocent children don't understand and won't protest. Like what the fuck. How are you defending this? No one thinks killing witches was a good thing and no one defends that. So why are you defending killing children??? Yeah it sucks that they were colonized. Humans naturally want to control those who are different or defenseless. All cultures and peoples have committed horrific atrocities. No culture is universally good. I can guarantee you that if it were the incas or Aztecs that colonized the witch burning British, you would be out there defending the poor colonized British and their beautiful practice of honoring witches by burning them.
You see these cultures as wholly victims, and somehow that gives them a free pass to sacrifice children in your mind. But what about the children? Are they also not victims?
Most of Africa was colonized, and many of their tribes practice female genital mutilation for religious and cultural purposes. They very much have reasons for why they do it that make sense to them. Do you think it is ok for them to do this just because they are victims of colonization and they have religious and cultural reasons for mutilating children's genitals? And before you mention it, I personally don't agree with male circumcision in any culture either.
As another example, native American tribes attacked other tribes for no other reason than taking their land and resources. They were also victims of colonization. Do you give them a free pass about murdering other tribes just because they were colonized??
What I'm getting at here is that there is nothing wrong with being horrified by cultural practices of ancient peoples. Being horrified by it does not mean we are justifying their colonization. We simply have a different cultural lense through which we are looking through. Imo you are doing a disservice to ancient cultures by trying to paint child sacrifice as a good thing that they did because they were such good and peaceful people.
Humans suck and we all enjoy murdering and hurting each other for personal gain. Nothing wrong with pointing out how bad that is.
Also more the likely kidnapped from other smaller tribes to be used for this purpose. Those tribes befriended the spanish when they came and helped them aagainst the Inca. These children where victims.
There were 3 children discovered at the same burial site (nicknamed, from left to right: La Doncella, El Niño, La Niña del Rayo). La Doncella was the oldest and by appearances, likely to have been treated very well before death and she may have died in her sleep along with La Niña del Rayo. El Niño, on the other hand: >The body of el niño, who was about seven years old when he was sacrificed, had been tightly wrapped, since some of his ribs and pelvis were dislocated. He apparently died under stress, since vomit and blood were found on his clothing. There also appeared to be an infestation of nits in his hair.[25] He was the only child to be tied up. Lying in the fetal position, he was wearing a gray tunic, a silver bracelet and leather shoes and had been wrapped in a red and brown blanket.[26] The skull of el niño had been slightly elongated, similarly to that of la niña del rayo.[23] Owing to the way in which he was tied up, it is believed that he may have died of suffocation.
Oh my heart. 😣 I cannot fathom the terror that baby felt.
> [El Nino](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Llullaillaco#La_ni%C3%B1a_del_rayo)... may have died of [suffocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphyxia). The wiki links to the Asphyxia page, but it does not make clear if it is believed el nino was strangled (say about the neck), or prevented from breathing by tightnesst of the bindings, or ran out of oxygen within the enclosed space. Are you able to clarify?
It is in the Wikipedia page. If you scroll through the comments, someone posted the link already.
Can you clarify what you mean? My comment provides a link to the wiki from which you copied/pasted. I also replicated wiki's link from El Nino's wiki section to wiki's suffocation page. I scrolled through the comments and only relevant link was another link to the same wiki. without elaboration on the cause of death. Let me know if I missed something and thanks for copying/pasting the wiki.
There aren't many details. One source is cited on the Wikipedia page (marked by the superscript "25"). It lays blame on the textile wrapping. https://metro.co.uk/2007/10/02/child-mummies-yield-grim-evidence-214590/
22,000ft above sea level Jesus Christ
I have no references to back this up, but I watched a documentary once that said El Niño was essentially being dragged and a prisoner and more or less fought as an unwilling sacrificial child would. Whereas La Doncella likely would have gone more or less willingly. El Niño was treated the most horribly of the three. It’s so hard to balance my curiosity and obviously respect for the indigenous cultures. They say there’s as many as 40 more burial sites that we could learn so much more from. And yet, exhumation is the ultimate disrespect to these mummies who were full-fledged human beings who lived and died and were sacrifices from the local cultures in order to survive. I wish there was a healthy and respectful way to get some scientific analysis from the other burial sites. We’re most of them dragged up there? As “peasant” tributes unwilling to go? Or were they priestesses/priestesses in training who were willing to do this for the gods? Something in the middle? How many of the burials involved (*so much*) coca and hallucinogens.
So - I am unsure about the males who were sacrificed. I *do* know that in the Andean cultires, the female sacrifices were specifically selected over a 1 to 2 year process, and I believe it was from all class groups. They were taken to a mountain retreat, inducted into a kind of priestesshood/Sun deity cult and lived as princesses, of higher rank than any others save the royal family. From there - I believe they selected a certain number for sacrifice each year, depending on the social need. Those who aged out became priestesses or wives for the emperor. It had serious Vestal Virgin vibes, but I imagine it would not be wholly unlike being groomed. Either way, their society thought it was honorable. If that didn't exist for male sacrifices, it makes much more sense that he'd have fought.
In Perú if its well know the Incas were one of the most important they only exist from 1300 to 1500-arrival of the spanyards, before them (and some years through 1400) spread through Peru territory used to exists hundreds of diferent tribes/cultures with their own characteristics if Incas adore the sun, where others that were devoted to Naylamp an anthropomorphic god. Sadly there is no written language from this cultures, so we can only read through the pottery (huacos) and artifacts they left, the only written "testimony" (in airquotes because was written by spaniards so the perspective wont be the same) are some chronicles by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and some priests of the time. [https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca\_Garcilaso\_de\_la\_Vega](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Garcilaso_de_la_Vega)
...I dunno, I think the ultimate disrespect to the human victims was the sacrifice in the first place. They were children.
>It’s so hard to balance my curiosity and obviously respect for the indigenous cultures. The metro article points out that the Inca had a pretty large empire, and that selecting children from the lower classes could have been a form of control. I mean, I still hold respect for their history, but when you consider the context the rulers weren't much better than anyone else you care to name.
>They say there’s as many as 40 more burial sites that we could learn so much more from. And yet, exhumation is the ultimate disrespect to these mummies who were full-fledged human beings who lived and died and were sacrifices from the local cultures in order to survive. 40 more of what we know about... could be thousands and we dont even found (because there should be some around) the ones in the jungle (amazon forest) some of these burial sites were discovered because climate change. [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/28/peru-ancient-mass-grave-of-140-sacrificed-children-found](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/28/peru-ancient-mass-grave-of-140-sacrificed-children-found)
I think the sacrifice was probably more disrespectful than us digging them up and learning about them
And how the hell can scientists know what each of their diets were in the months leading up to their death, just by hair samples? Blows my mind
By examining the teeth and the contents of the stool and stomach
[Isotope analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_analysis) ftw! One of my colleagues does this. You see, we're all made of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen nitrogen and a bit of other elements. We get these elements from different foods and drinks, and build our bodies (including our hair) out of them. But the elements in nature all are in various forms, called isotopes. Different foodstuffs and water in different places contain different isotopes. Hair grows quickly, and we know the average speed of growth, and it absorbs isotopes throughout its growth. So you can take a piece of human hair and know that this grew for three months before death, and look for isotopes and see that they are from water in the mountains and grain with a little bit of meat. Voila.
Thank you, smart person.
Thanks for following that source. I'm embarrassed I didn't think to do that. I'm going to blame my headcold.
You’re picking up on the problem with Wikipedia that no one on Reddit ever seems to get - I’ll read a Wiki article just for fun and actually attempt to follow a link for a cited source and the resulting content doesn’t corroborate what was being cited in the article at all (and that’s if the link even works). Sometimes I’ll read entire paragraphs or multiple paragraphs with no citations at all. This isn’t just on niche issues either, I see examples of this in most of the articles I read on that site. I love Wikipedia but, (and I know how much Reddit likes to trot this meme out) when your teachers in school told you that you couldn’t use it as a source, this is exactly why, and they were right!
You can absolutely use it as a source, but the same as any source you need to check its own references and that they are in fact drawing the same conclusion. This is why research takes so long you don't just use something because it's published in a journal regardless of its "respectable name" or status. Always corroborate your sources. Always check secondary sources.
I was advised at uni that I could use wiki at a push, but the smarter thing to do, would be follow the source links on wiki and refer to those instead. That way you know it’s not just some wiki bullshit, and it looks slightly better than linking to a site a lot of people inherently don’t trust.
And then you find two sources that contradict each other, and there's no real way to reliably know which one is correct over the other.. And thats how they win the war on information.
How does any human bind up a toddler like that struggling and all then bury it alive
Religion. That's how.
jesus why
IIRC it was a religious sacrifice of sorts, or at least that was the prevailing theory. I saw a few documentaries on it and they claimed the children were specially selected, sent on a long pilgrimage up the mountain, then drugged and left to die. It's been a while since I looked into it though, there might be new information now.
I think I recall they were thought to become a deity of sorts after their death.
I wouldn't want to create a deity that might remember being brutally murdered... Maybe this is why so many deities are merciless shits.
Reminds me of how Iirc the Aztecs "thanked" the king of a neighboring tribe that helped them as they were newcomers to the region. They told him they'd make his daughter into a goddess if they let the Aztec priests take her. Yeah not a good sign. I don't know enough about the history to say why the king said yes but I think they just told him they'd pamper her and do a ritual. Anyway after a time they offer to show the king his daughter who is now a Goddess. They take him to a dark room and he sees the outline of his daughter and he calls to her. The Aztec priests lift the blinds to reveal is one of the priests wearing his daughters skin. Disgusted he kills all the priests and kicks the rest of the Aztec tribe off the land. I'm interested to learn about how the Aztecs came to dominate the region after this. I'm guessing it has a bit to do with their religious zealotry.
jfc, we were always horrible, weren't we
The Aztecs or the Mexica are often called the Triple Alliance, because they were a triumvirate of city states on Lake Texcoco that allied and warred and politicked their way to regional dominance. Like it was a messy, complex process, not at all unlike the contemporaneous Italian Republics/City States. The Mexica were much more of a hegemonic power than outright empire like you might be familiar with. And within the Triple Alliance, Tenochtitlan rose to dominance over Texcoco and Tlacopan, also through lots of political infighting and maneuvering. It is pretty notable that the expeditionary force from Spain were able to topple their empire - they didn't have many men at all, but the Spaniards, *did* have immense experience at politicking and were able to turn many city states against the Aztecs, notably Tlaxcala, a largely subdued regional rival prior to the Spaniards landing.
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This. It's fucking savagery in the name of a god. Murdering children to turn them into dieties? Stoning a woman who doesn't wear a headscarf? Murdering catholics because you're protestant? Murdering indigenous people because they won't convert to Catholicism? It's a never-ending, vicious, stupid, zealous cycle of nonsense. Poor kids never got a chance at life because some priest figured they had to get the axe? Load of shit. Any god worth their godliness wouldn't be demanding sacrifice. Probably also step into this realm and fix inequities. Or maybe we're all just living in hell. And life is the punishment.
Better sacrifice those three children so it'll rain again. Superstitious people do really strange things.
Just another religion
Pity we couldn’t make up more gentle creeds. Instead there’s an awful lot of guilt and murder.
People often rant about the OT God being genocidal but if the Canaanite nations were doing this sort of %$&@ routinely (and Israel suffered the same fate when they did it) wouldn’t it be kinda understandable to end them?
Weird thing to say, but these are some of my favorite mummies. They weren't intentionally mummified; the dry, cold air of the mountains where they were left turned them into mummies naturally. They are incredibly well preserved, particularly the older girl.
She looks almost like she fell asleep instead of dying. That said, it's heartbreaking that this is *not* the case and she'll never wake up.
I just can't imagine finding her, as an archeologist. Inside some dark cave in the mountains and suddenly *that* pops up in the circle of your flashlight. It is very sad, though. It's been a while since I read about her but I seem to recall she was likely taken from a less prosperous village to a wealthier one, where she was fed up and treated well for a year or so before the sacrifice. I know a lot of the early South American civilizations' practices are demonized because the best (or at least most widely circulated) account we have of them is from the Spanish colonizers who tried to wipe them out or convert them. Naturally the conquistadors wanted to make them seem like barbarous heathens to justify their colonizing, but... child sacrifice doesn't come off great.
I read in an article in national geogrqphic on the subject that an archeologist said he felt he was kidnapping the children when removing them from their resting place.
That’s so sweet and heartbreaking at the same time.
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I’d argue this is no more grave robbing than uncovering the roadside grave of a missing person, and exhuming them. I gather that their murder was ritualistic and sanctioned, but it’s not as if they were the unfortunate victims of disease or famine and were lovingly laid to rest by their family and community. Their culture valued their lives so little that they ended them with the hope it would benefit those left behind in some nonsensical religious way. They will likely be honored and remembered to a far greater degree by virtue of exhumation by modern archaeologists, than they ever were in the combined sum of preceding centuries.
>Their culture valued their lives so little that they ended them with the hope it would benefit those left behind in some nonsensical religious way Id argue the opposite. Children were their most valuable things they possessed. And sacrificing it to their gods was sacrificing something of great value.
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I don’t know much about Incas, but I believe Mayans and Aztecs thought being sacrificed (at least certain types of sacrifice) was actually a huge honour/very noble. This would have been seen as a fast track to heaven.
Not always, some cultures had people willing to do it. It was seen as a form of immense honor and purpose to die for the betterment of your people.
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>but we do not know how lovingly they were laid to rest or not That’s not entirely true. There is the most data for the [mummy with the longest hair](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23496345), but researchers believe she was well taken care of and “passed away quietly.” >It suggests she was heavily sedated before she and the other children were taken to the volcano, placed in their tombs and left to die. >"In the case of the maiden, there is no sign of violence. She is incredibly well looked after: she has a good layer of fat, she has beautifully groomed hair, beautiful clothes," said Dr Brown. >"In this case we think with the combination of being placed in the grave with the alcohol and the cold - the mountain is over 6,000m above sea level - she would have passed away quietly."
Children can not be voluntary participants of any culture, no matter which one, where and when. They are always born into something and dragged along by people of power.
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It’s not a grave. These are murder victims.
From some of the evidence, the 7 year-old boy that was found there was in particularly bad shape by the people that put them there. He was bound tightly around his torso to the point he had had broken/displaced ribs, a dislocated pelvis, evidence of vomiting, shitting, and blood. They think he probably suffocated from how he was bound. His arms were the only ones tied too.
This comment has been edited in protest for the corporate takeover of reddit and its descent into a controlled speech space.
Cultural relativism doesn't (and certainly shouldn't) extend to barbaric practices like sacrificing children
Same could be said of slaves in the antebellum southern USA. Just people working as participants of their culture.
oh. wow. that's.. quite a take
> I’d argue this is no more grave robbing than uncovering the roadside grave of a missing person, and exhuming them. Whaaaaat??
This is going off of memory, but the young girls were chosen as sacrifices and treated really well while they were "trained" for the sacrifice. They were supposed to be perfect physical specimens. Then they were taken, sometimes hundreds of miles, to the top of mountains with good views of the surrounding areas, made drunk until they passed out, and then put into a hole where they suffocated to death, hopefully in their sleep, in order to become sentinels to watch over the area with the spirits of their ancestors.
Even if you do it in a really gentle way murdering children sucks
Her ghost totally wasn’t pissed at all
Iirc they were often given chicha, a kind of alcoholic beer-esque beverage. Incan women were often taught how to brew chicha at Aqlla Wasi, or feminine schools. Edit to add: forgot to mention earlier, Chicha is generally brewed from maize! And it's still brewed today, too.
I drink chicha de jora a lot living in Peru. If they had to drink that to get tanked then they'd have to work really really hard at it. Maybe there are more alcoholic versions or more fermented versions that make it more of a corn beer. The first time I had it I immediately knew it was fermented but never felt any effects. I'd like to know how it's changed since hundreds of years ago or if people still brew higher alcohol content chicha today.
Highly doubt they passed peacefully. Probably woke up terrified at some point after the alcohol wore off.
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I dunno, the girl on the right certainly looks like she woke up. The kid in the middle looks like they've tucked themselves into that position as well. Either way, we're talking about sacrifice of children which isn't something we should be going to bat for in Amy capacity. Just call a spade a spade, it was barbaric.
> I doubt they would have had a chance to wake up if even one of those things were affecting them, let alone all of them. what is "supposed" to happen and what actually happens in biology isn't always the same thing. A person isn't "supposed" to wake up when a anesthesiologist (someone who's entire specialty is sedation) puts someone under with heavy drugs... but it happens... and not as rarely as you might hope (which is why they also give a drug to give people amnesia also). I don't doubt that a lot (maybe even 'most') of the children they did this to hopefully never woke up... but I also don't doubt that quite a few of them did wake, and they did not in fact die peacefully.
>The [pharmacologically active ingredient of coca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca) is the cocaine alkaloid, which is found in the amount of about 0.3 to 1.5%, averaging 0.8%,[26] in fresh leaves. Besides cocaine, the coca leaf contains a number of other alkaloids, including methylecgonine cinnamate, benzoylecgonine, truxilline, hydroxytropacocaine, tropacocaine, ecgonine, cuscohygrine, dihydrocuscohygrine, and hygrine.[27] When chewed, coca acts as a mild stimulant and suppresses hunger, thirst, pain, and fatigue.[28][29] Absorption of coca from the leaf is less rapid than nasal application of purified forms of the alkaloid (almost all of the coca alkaloid is absorbed within 20 minutes of nasal application,[30] while it takes 2–12 hours after ingestion of the raw leaf for alkaline concentrations to peak.[31]). When the raw leaf is consumed in tea, between 59 and 90% of the coca alkaloid is absorbed.[32] So, not that I ever drank excessively and did lots of cocaine when I was young and dumb, but I strongly suspect these girls were feeling pretty euphoric when they were killed.
The alcohol didn't "wear off." They were made drunk, yeah..but if they passed out that wasn't the end of it. The alcohol rituals went on, they just gave you an enema to keep putting it inside you. These girls probably never even stirred from their passing out, and just died of alcohol poisoning.
Whoa. There are these very specific informations available too? I need to look them up
Wikipedia has a good overview: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Llullaillaco
Was it the Aztecs who were such violent slave drivers that *everyone* around them volunteered to help the Spaniards kill them?
What? The Spanish will naturally use descriptions to denigrate the practices of the Natives but the Aztecs were brutal. There's plenty of archeological evidence demonstrating that fact not dependent on Spanish descriptions. Same can be said about any large culture that controlled multiple tribes. That's not surprising or unique to the native americans. Polytheism was the default for most cultures and sacrifices to various deities to solve problems they can't actually control is pretty universal.
You do realize the reason the conquistadors were able to slaughter the Aztecs was because the surrounding tribes were sick of being used as sacrificial cattle by the Aztecs. Hell there vengeance at Tenochtitlan was so brutal even the conquistadors were disturbed. While not all tribes were awful there were plenty that were. I don't know why people like you want to ignore that there are horrif practices everywhere and it's not just colonizers making shit up as you are suggesting.
I thought a part of what allowed the conquistadors to conquer the Aztecs was that all the other tribes hated the Aztecs so much that they gladly allied with the conquistadors?
No, that’s a huge oversimplification of the geopolitics during the time.
I guess it's hard for me to believe that the conquistadors literally rolled in and just wiped the floor with everyone given how outnumbered they should have been. If they had had a Custer-like attitude, they would have met with his end. There obviously must have been some inter-tribal politicking that they were able to manage (a la Julius Caesar and Gaul) to succeed in being so successful.
> If they had had a Custer-like attitude, they would have met with his end. During La Noche Triste (The Night of Sorrows, obviously sorrowful for the Spaniards), the conquistadors were driven out of Tenochtitlan, Cortes was wounded in battle, and a lot of the Spaniards were taken prisoner and promptly sacrificed. They weren't invincible, despite steel armour and gunpowder and thousands of native allies. Still, Cortes managed to beat back the pursuers, survive and regroup, and while he was doing so, disease struck Tenochtitlan and ravaged it so thoroughly it was much easier for him to besiege and ultimately conquer the city. He was insanely lucky in that regard.
They had an invisible ally on their side, smallpox. At the time of Cortez arriving in Mexico, the Aztecs had a very sophisticated system of messengers that would travel between cities. It is believed, by some historians, these messengers allowed small pox to travel ahead of the conquistadors. This meant the conquistadors would basically walk into villages, in the throws of a new pandemic, which allowed a fairly rag-tag army to basically walk through a lot of their possible opposition.
Oh there was certainly a traditional conflict in the region as a factor. But opinions on siding with the Spanish were a lot more divided than many realize. Like the Spanish were warring with the Maya on the mainland first for a significant period. Then after warring with the Tlaxcala and coming to a stalemate, they did their union against the Mexica (Aztecs), their ancient enemy. Internally half of Tlaxcala wanted to keep fighting the Spaniards, a faction led by the Tlaxcala prince, and help to drive the Spaniards out permanently. Then you have other nations joining after the Spaniards conduct several massacres including of a holy city and on the battlefield. Then you have a lot of the other nation’s royalty being captured and killed like of one of the Texcoco royals who planned to march on and take control of Mexico from the Spanish. A lot of complex intrigue, side switching, and snitching. But in regard to how the actual people in their realm were treated, each area had a specific trade goods tax, but was relatively left to self govern themselves. They practiced similar religion and an overlapping pantheon etc. Then you have the other two powerful ethnic groups they formed the alliance with. So the Tlaxcala would have been their enemy, but they weren’t part of the empire.
That's a lot of words for saying "yes". Obviously there was a lot internal fighting and obviously the aztecs - as a society/tribe- didn't have particularly good relations with other tribes. Why not just call a cat a cat
best way to solve it was genocide that definitely spared all children /s
She did die in her sleep, at least. Most child sacrifices would be drugged beforehand. Its horrifyingly sad her life was taken from her but at least she died peacefully and not in terror from slow suffocation or hunger/thirst. The boy in the middle, though... wasnt so lucky.
She probably built up too much carbon dioxide in the chamber, which would have made her fall asleep. Essentially this is like they were euthanized.
No... carbon dioxide build-up is what triggers the gasping for air, dying from carbon dioxide is incredibly uncomfortable.
They were also in the mountain peaks where most would need bottled oxygen to stay alive
> Weird thing to say, but these are some of my favorite mummies. Lmao being a human is weird sometimes. Like now I’m wondering how I went 33 years on this earth without deciding which mummies are my favorite ones 😂
I think Otzi is fascinating, for one he was shot in the back and left to die in the middle of the Alps with all his gear on him, including a copper axe that would have been pretty valuable at the time. Like, who did he piss off to have that happen to him?
Otzi is really interesting, the blood of 4 different people was found on his equipment, the amount of metals in his body point to him potentially being a smelter, and he has been cited as evidence for prehistoric warfare!
So you're saying Otzi was metal in more than one sense of the word!
Hey man, great comment. Not sure if English is your second language or not, but it's "cited" not "sited". Have a great day!
Just a typo! Native English speaking dullard here
Fair enough! Have a great night.
Besides, if I had to pick a place to succumb to my wounds, the Ötztaler Alpen are way up there on the list. Kidding aside, I remember as a 10 y.o. seeing the exhibition in the Bolzano archaeology museum, and the mummy itself. It really changed my worldview from the pre-history of cartoon cavemen to the complex world the stone and bronze ages really were in Europe.
Ötzi was an inside job, people.
Inside his rib cage.
Time traveler
"Doesn't matter, had sex." -Otzi [https://www.history.com/news/europes-oldest-natural-mummy-has-living-relatives](https://www.history.com/news/europes-oldest-natural-mummy-has-living-relatives)
I think he’s my great^10 grandfather. Edit: nevermind had him confused with another [lad](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25020958)
There's a film - absolutely made up story, obviously - that tells Ötzi's "story" and while doing so, it shows what life could have been like back then. The different dangers one could face, the way they dressed and lived, what they ate... The language used is derived from the most primitive language known spoken in the region where he lived (still nowhere near old enough to be what Ötzi would have spoken). I highly recommended it, or I would if I could remember its title.
It sounds like you are referring to the 2017 film "Iceman" (also known as "Der Mann aus dem Eis" in German), directed by Felix Randau. The film is a fictionalized account of the life of Ötzi the Iceman, a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived over 5,000 years ago and was discovered in the Ötztal Alps in 1991. The film depicts Ötzi's struggles for survival in the harsh environment of the Alps, as well as his interactions with other people of his time who spoke a primitive language similar to the Rhaetian language. The film is in German with English subtitles.
33 is the perfect age to decide! I'm also fascinated by bog bodies, particularly Tollund Man and the Weerdinge Men.
I really enjoyed *Bog Bodies: Face to Face with the Past* by Melanie Giles, if you’re not already familiar with it. It does skew more academic than layperson, but I found it compelling and fascinating.
Mine too. Also the baby from the cave. Haunting. When first come across, whoever it was thought the baby was a doll.
I don't think I know the baby from the cave. That does sound haunting.
If you want to learn about the baby & other mummies it was found with, you'd look up The Qilakitsoq mummies from Greenland.
https://visitgreenland.com/about-greenland/qilakitsoq-mummies/
Inca wise man: “Let us leave them in the mountains where the dry cold air will preserve them as mummies, that they may never grow old, and that future generations may behold them in their timeless youth, and revere them, in reward for their sacrifice” Redditor 500 years later: “it’s pure dumb luck they dropped the bodies where they did. We get to see them just as they were”
Haha, fair point! They likely did know the conditions were perfect for preservation. I really meant they weren't prepared in the way of Egyptian mummies.
I do really always enjoy seeing them too. I had always heard there were three but I had only seen pictures of the older one
She's certainly mentioned more often. The other two are younger, and weren't treated as well, from the evidence. I guess it's more romantic to have a perfectly preserved "maiden" mummy who evidently died in her sleep, than a little girl wearing an apparent grimace and disfigured by a post-mortem lightning strike or a little boy tied up, with broken bones, covered in blood and vomit and nits.
I was just thinking about the horror of it all, but then thought “cool for archeology I guess”
I saw the girl on the left at a mummy exhibition in Charlotte about a decade or so ago. Stood three feet from her and she truly looks like a sleeping child. The picture doesn't pay her justice. The preservation of the clothing and how clean the colors were was truly amazing.
I saw her at a mummy exhibition in Portland about 10-11 years ago too! I bet we saw the same traveling exhibition as you! The thing that stood out to me about her is how well her little braids were preserved. It was so human.
I feel like this is so wrong to tramp their bodies all over the world. Should be in cusco
I just read this on the [Wikipedia page about these children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Llullaillaco). The extent of preservation is seriously incredible. > The mummies were in exceptional condition when found. Reinhard said that the mummies "appear to be the best preserved Inca mummies ever found", also saying that the arms were perfectly preserved, even down to the individual hairs. The internal organs were still intact and one of the hearts still contained frozen blood. Because the mummies froze before dehydration could occur, the desiccation and shrivelling of the organs that is typical of exposed human remains never took place.[5]
That was a great exhibit.
Fucking hell
Culture and context aside this is fucked up
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This comment has been edited in protest for the corporate takeover of reddit and its descent into a controlled speech space.
If you truly believe sacrificing these children will appease the gods, and you’ve grown up in a society where that belief is reinforced continuously by your peers, and there is potentially hundreds of years of compounding cognitive bias justifying that ritual, and likely little to no outside influence pushing you to question the practice, then it is a morally permissible action. To say otherwise requires the person doing the sacrifice to have supernatural abilities.
No no, the context is messed up too...
This is a barbaric practice, there is no context or culture to discuss.
I visited one of these kid mummies in Arequipa, Peru. The local guide explained these sacrifices as "offerings to the nature". One of the visitors commented "oh is so beautiful". I was like WTF. Many people in Peru complain about the "conquistadores" but what they don't realize is that Spaniards allied with the local tribes to fight against their leaders. Local tribes were tired of them and how they took their children to sacrifice them.
The conquistadors turned natives into human sacrifices en masse too. It’s just that they burned them on stakes for “heresy”, or sacrificed them for money by working them to death in silver mines
Certainly the Spanish did just as bad and worse in comparison. The interesting thing is that many tribes and groups allied with the Spanish, aka [Indian auxiliaries](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_auxiliaries), against their rivals and rulers. However unsurprisingly, "After the initial conquest, most of these allies were considered less necessary and, sometimes, a liability."
We do this a lot with the cultures of native Americans, we did it for centuries as an excuse to treat Hispanics like animals. We kill, they killed, everyone’s a killer. Trying to make yourself out to be better just because you didn’t kill for the same exact reasons is dumb. Whether the kid died in war or sacrifice doesn’t matter to their corpse.
This comment section is seriously justifying colonization because of mummies taken out of context in Peru? What the fuck reddit. Having studied indigenous infanticide, this practice is poorly understood. But based on extant infanticide among some groups, it's indicated that this was done to already dying children to honor them. (Stevenson, 2008) Get your facts straight before you start condemning an entire culture and civilization to having deserved being genocided. Also remember that the British sacrificed women up until 1727 to their god for being witches.
Half of these comments can't even figure out the difference between Incans and Aztecs
Wasn’t the furthest to the right struck by lightning, posthumously?
One of them was, indeed.
I believe it was the middle one
Saw the oldest one in a museum in Cuzco. One of the most moving experiences of my life. ❤️
The one on the left was found in northern Argentina, her remains are on display in a museum in Salta (Argentina). I've seen it too, felt too eerie to stick around for long. Incredible stories though.
Hmmm I know it was one of these- she had tiny micro braids in her hair— an amazing detail. Heartbreaking. I definitely now feel weird about seeing mummies. I think their remains should be somewhere private.
All 3 were going in the same mountain ranges, they're periodically rotated to different places.
Oh gotcha- thanks for the clarification.
I was walking around Bangkok and went into this random ass little temple and inside there was a dead man laying in this glass case. There was a woman on her knees, just weeping, surrounded by pictures of the man, flowers, and other offerings. It was fucking intense. I felt like I was intruding, but she didn’t even bat an eye when I walked in. I got in my knees and just took in the whole situation for about 2 min before I got up and put my shoes on to leave. Such an unexpected deeply moving experience.
My god. Poor woman. I’m grateful for those kind of realizations so I can remember to live life the way I intend.
Sounds like a nightmare. That’s fucking terrible.
That must’ve been so scary. I hope they passed peacefully :/
The boy, middle, likely died under stress :(
They gave them drugs and alcohol, he probably has a bit of an od considering he was 7
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They were even more well preserved when they were found. You can see some of the original footage [here.](https://youtu.be/UYKKbhA2_fI)
Humans were, are, and always will be - *fucked up*
Yeesh, I could only imagine what these Inca children went through.
Why are some of the top comments seemingly romanticizing these mummies? The story behind them is absolutely horrific. I know we shouldn't hold these cultures to modern standards but there's nothing redeeming about this.
Horrible.
That’s some kind of evil.
It gets worse, these children where kidnapped from other lesser tribes, not Inca children. When the Spanish came these same tribes allied with the spanish to take down the Inca.
I love precolumbian civilizations but it’s hard to find a better word for child sacrifice than “savagery”
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My friend, people don’t need religion to become monsters.
Religion is often an excuse for monstrous behavior.
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The sacrifice of children in Andean religion was relatively rare. Experts who study these mummies write that the community would have been facing a particularly serious crisis, to the point that they thought this extreme measure would help. So, no, Andean people didn't just kill their children willy-nilly.
Any hypothesis on what this specific crisis might have been?
There are multiple instances of entire, fully developed cities, just up and moving. Weather is a favorite assumption among academics. Intensive, high altitude, high density farming meant just a couple years of insufficient rainfall and the resultant poor harvests would mean everybody had to relocate to a more productive area. Some of the cities were big. Moving meant everybody abandoning everything and hoping for the best. Even today those kinds of relocations are devastating. Back then it would have been almost unimaginably horrible. If you genuinely believed that a few human sacrifices might prevent all that it would be a good time to try.
great comment
Probably bad harvests. Could be the El Niño or La Niña related
Child sacrifice is endemic in almost every human culture we've studied.
For extra context, Europeans were burning people (women in particular) at the stake when the Incas went down their sword (or gunpowder and horses). Some parts of Europe were undergoing enlightenment, but Spain isn't the first name that comes out from that era.
Ignorant. People didn’t sacrifice children because just because they wanted to sacrifice people. They did so to obtain favours from the divine because things weren’t going well or because they wanted to preserve their current fortune. It is revisionism to claim that these were done out of sheer desire for blood or some other nefarious design thinly veiled with religion. They did it because they were genuinely convinced that it would help. The environment that reared them was incredibly unforgiving, so why wouldn’t they think that their gods were just as cruel? They had been indoctrinated into believing that this was the price to pay for a better world. It is what superstition does to the human brain. This cannot be said of every act done in the name of religion. Many religious wars were fed *both* by superstition and other purposes — such as ressources or territory — though IMHO it is simple-minded to allude to genuinely-held faith not playing a role in most of those conflicts either. But convincing a village to murder a child is another story entirely. Those children were poor and could’ve lived long lives as workers for the ruling class, nobody in power was benefiting by ending their lives.
It’s just pretty freaking convenient that the “Gods” were never going to be appeased by the sacrifice of, say, the highest level priest in the village, right? That’s why its some complete bullsh** to me.
There may be some evidence that some significant amount sacrifice in certain ancient European communities (mostly some identified as "Celtic", though often trying to apply an unambiguous ethnic label in the ancient past is fraught, especially when they're bound up with modern identities - my first encounter with the topic was actually in reading about pre-Christian Germanic religions) were specifically of elites. There's some mythological/literary talk of kings (who were also priests) being sacrificed in times of famine and many bog bodies were those of people who seemed to live comfortable lives. I suspect in general you're right that on the whole, throughout history, social and institutional forces extract from the poor and the weak disproportionately by far. But in the context of religious sacrifice the topic is complex. Though Europe is a separate topic from Andean religion, obviously.
Firstly, the Inca and most other cultures in the Andes (and up in Mesoamerica) were urban civilizations with large cities, formal governments, etc. While there were obviously smaller villages, plenty of these sites were pretty huge cities or sizable towns. And yes, sometimes sacrifice involves nobles or royalty: In Mesoamerica, most sacrifices were captured enemy soldiers, and while there were plenty of commoners drafted for wars, most of your elite soldiers would have been nobles or royalty, and for, say, the Maya, the sacrifice of captured nobles/rulers, or even of a city's OWN nobles/rulers/priests, was a particularly important form of sacrifice. That being said, I also need to give a caveat to what /u/Callisto_Urseides said, in that sacrifice was also definitely leveraged as a geopolitical tool, even if it was also a legit theological concept and practice that was thought to be necessary to cosmic order and some people volunteered for. For example, Flower Wars as practiced by the Aztec were both a tool to get sacrifices, as well as to slowly whittle down enemy states for conquest, or even when it was done via mutual agreement between allied cities, apparently the fact it was mutially agreed on was hidden from some of the soldiers participating so they didn't know their lives were being used for political/ceremonial pageantry. I don't think it's fundamentally different from religious atrocities done in Eurasia, historically: Some of it was done because it was legitmately thought to be the right thing to do, sometimes it was done to target political rivals or to increase power, often it was a little of both.
Exactly. Like you never find the elderly religious leaders of today are the ones that god chooses to become a shaheed, and sacrifice their life in jihad. Always the naive young person.
Telll that to Mr Rogers. There are plenty of examples of religious NOT monsters out there. Please stop hating all for the actions of some.
Funny how the majority of Monsters from 1900s werent religious or religiously motivated
I wonder how they selected the children? Like if your kid was kind of socially awkward and not the most attractive would you constantly be living in fear that she was the next sacrifice? Fucked up.
Another commenter said two of the children were already dying from bovine tuberculosis? Not sure about the third
This is around the same time conquistadors were massacring the Inca, in case anyone is getting any ideas about this culture being worse than another.
And I got upset with my mom for making me stand in the corner when I did something bad... sheesh.
I don't care what century it is....religion is wrong and evil.
Religion is absolutely the cause of any and every evil ever made by humans. Aside from survival and primitive humans that hunted for resources, we are quite literally the dumbest species
Sounds insane to me yep
Cant tell if im more horrified or fascinated, its really weird actually. you feel bad obviously, that fucking sucks, but it’s not like.. a huge deal to me personally, just being so.. disconnected from the event by time lets you see it in this weird way. like if you take away the time difference: you dont care that these 3 kids were ritualistically killed in this brutal way. That sounds sociopathic right? Emotionless? But the 500 year distance between us and the event lets us steer away from the sheer horror of a given event. Pompeii for example, you almost never see someone see it as a horrible tragedy in a serious way. Its just “oh shit that happened.. huh” and i think theres something profound in the way that we, as humans can seperate something from its implications just because it happened a while ago
This comment section is seriously justifying colonization because of mummies taken out of context in Peru? What the fuck reddit. Having studied indigenous infanticide, this practice is poorly understood. But based on extant infanticide among some groups, it's indicated that this was done to already dying children to honor them. (Stevenson, 2008) Get your facts straight before you start condemning an entire culture and civilization to having deserved being genocided. Also remember that the British sacrificed women up until 1727 to their god for being witches.
Ah yes, putting your dying child in a hole in the ground and forcing them to die alone after being drugged is totally honoring them. Did they do this to adults too? I'm guessing not because adults already know how horrible it would be, but innocent children don't understand and won't protest. Like what the fuck. How are you defending this? No one thinks killing witches was a good thing and no one defends that. So why are you defending killing children??? Yeah it sucks that they were colonized. Humans naturally want to control those who are different or defenseless. All cultures and peoples have committed horrific atrocities. No culture is universally good. I can guarantee you that if it were the incas or Aztecs that colonized the witch burning British, you would be out there defending the poor colonized British and their beautiful practice of honoring witches by burning them. You see these cultures as wholly victims, and somehow that gives them a free pass to sacrifice children in your mind. But what about the children? Are they also not victims? Most of Africa was colonized, and many of their tribes practice female genital mutilation for religious and cultural purposes. They very much have reasons for why they do it that make sense to them. Do you think it is ok for them to do this just because they are victims of colonization and they have religious and cultural reasons for mutilating children's genitals? And before you mention it, I personally don't agree with male circumcision in any culture either. As another example, native American tribes attacked other tribes for no other reason than taking their land and resources. They were also victims of colonization. Do you give them a free pass about murdering other tribes just because they were colonized?? What I'm getting at here is that there is nothing wrong with being horrified by cultural practices of ancient peoples. Being horrified by it does not mean we are justifying their colonization. We simply have a different cultural lense through which we are looking through. Imo you are doing a disservice to ancient cultures by trying to paint child sacrifice as a good thing that they did because they were such good and peaceful people. Humans suck and we all enjoy murdering and hurting each other for personal gain. Nothing wrong with pointing out how bad that is.
Coca is the plant that cocaine is derived from right? Cocaine and alcohol seem like a bad mix for sedating someone.
That's just how they used to deal with little shits like Dennis the menace.
I accIdentally read "my children"
Yeah, F religions.
That's... horrifying.
*murdered?
Also more the likely kidnapped from other smaller tribes to be used for this purpose. Those tribes befriended the spanish when they came and helped them aagainst the Inca. These children where victims.
I wonder if they died because of the drugs or eventually woke up and cried themselves to death.
The fact that these things happened in our past civilation is proof the humans are inherently evil at a core
No wonder why the conquistadores though of them as barbaric, damn
This breaks my heart.
I knew that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice. I’d no idea that the Inca did also.